Teach a Man to Fish – Part 1 – Educate

I want all my friends and family to get as excited about points and miles as I am… but to do it we’ve got to do it on THEIR terms. Gotta always remember that. This is the first of three posts that hopefully tell a story / help you educate your families.

Teach a Man to Fish:

Part 1 (Educate)

Part 2 (Encourage)

Part 3 (Execute)

Each year for “Spring Break” I take a trip with friends to a beach house in the south of Florida on the gulf. It’s on a private island and we’re very fortunate to be able to do this for free. One of my friend’s step-father owns a small beach house on Palm Island where we have a guys week each year. There are four or five us with about 1,000 square feet of living space with nothing to do on the island but eat, drink, go to the beach, and keep ourselves entertained.

One of the guys is a chef, so we eat well. The rest of us learn how to clean up and take orders for excellent food. Surprisingly a significant portion of our conversation focused on “how can I go to this wedding for free” or “I want to take a trip to Europe and not get ripped off” or my favorite (from my youngest brother) “I want to take a pimp trip”.

My two friends have a bunch of credit cards that are getting them 0% interest, points at Amazon, and some cash back. My brother owns a small business and is racking up American Express Membership Rewards to the tune of about 300,000 points (time to get him an Ink Bold to diversify). Each of them in the end want the same thing. They want to travel at a price they can afford! Instead of a conversation focused on sharing stories they were all focused on “How do I do this?” and “Can you show me now?” or “Can we spend a day on this when we get home?”. They’re hooked; in their own way they’ve seen what is possible, and how with a little thought they can make it happen. Sure my brother has a head start with membership rewards, but he wants to fly Lufthansa First through Frankfurt … MR can do that but there are better programs for him.

Three different guys, three different wants, different credit scores, different financial situations, and different spending capability.

Me: So, What do you want to do? / Where do you want to go?

Someone Else: I dunno.

Me: No really, where do you want to go?

Someone Else: Ummm … how about XYZ or ABC?

No one ever says “I’d like to fly Lufthansa First to Frankfurt spend a week in Germany. Then I’d like to head to Bangkok in Thai first, spend a few days in the city and then off to Phuket. Lastly I’d like to Fly Singapore Airlines to Sydney for a week and then head back to Los Angeles on Qantas.” … well I do.

If I said that to most of my family and friends I’d either get some blank stares or laughs. Either way, it’s a foreign language to them. It is my (our) responsibility to help educate them on the basics; the concepts. If our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents were able to get us where we are today we can help them and others do the same.

We spent time talking about the various programs, but when it came down to it they all need to set goals. What was their objective? If they don’t know where they want to go, or what they want to do then I couldn’t help them figure it out. Not knowing where you want to go isn’t the same as “I want to go here or here or here or here”. Sure you might need to simplify / get down to it to figure out what to plan is … but its something.

With a goal set, we’ve got to explain simply how to do it. Talk about RDMs, EQMs, open-jaws, and direct versus non-stop have no place here. Here are the programs, here’s how you track your balances, and here’s how these points can be used. Two complimentary examples:

United MileagePlus and Chase Ultimate Rewards … Earn United miles with both!

Use AwardWallet to track your balances. They’ll send you an email each day your balance changes.

Give some examples of how miles / points can be redeemed.

United miles could be used to book a flight directly on United OR on any of their partners (the latter is one of the least known things to new travelers and is oftentimes the BEST redemption option).

Those Chase Ultimate Rewards points, book a flight on United through the UR travel portal, or transfer points to United to top off a balance and redeem for that dream trip to Munich on Lufthansa.

We don’t need to give all the details here on how/when/who, but we need to open up minds. Don’t overwhelm … did you learn all about calculus, or how to speak a foreign language in one session? Yes, points and miles are calculus and a foreign language (or 10) all wrapped up.

Oh, and tell them about a trip you’ve taken; SHOW THEM PICTURES!!! Its way more than 1,000 words of value.

With some basic education done you’ve likely intrigued your “subject”, planted the seed, and they may already have a bug. Our next step is to encourage them …

Deal of the Day

For today’s Deal of the Day TopCashback is donating $50 cash (to be deposited to your TopCashback.com account) for the best overall travel deal submitted. A great mileage run, mistake fare, partner promo, new card sign-up offer, or the special twist you figured out on a deal today. Add it to the comments section of this post (along with your First Name, Last Initial, and Airport Code) or this afternoon’s Deal of the Day post by TOMORROW at 11:59pm ET to be eligible to win. That gives you two days to win!

Howie Rappaport
Once a geek, always a geek. Howie Rappaport has always had a knack for getting a good deal. His passions are technology and travel; two things he gets to play with every day. Traveling over 100,000 miles and...All Articles | Follow on Google+

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Next Story

Hahah! “pimp trip” … roller, baller, high class, all those silly acronyms. First class drinking Cristal eating caviar and filet mignon … all that silliness. My little brother just wants to do some out of the ordinary and with excessive opulence … purely for the fact to have experienced it once in his life. – Howie

disqust101

I think a lot of men expect a pimp trip to have happy endings. Especially in places like Thailand…and Vegas…

http://www.frugaltravelguy.com/ Frugal Travel Guy

to each their own; not what he had in mind though. -Howie

Lively

I tried to get my sister involved..but she doesn’t even want to hear about it. She mocks me and says, “I know…points, points.” So, meh, I’m giving up.

http://www.facebook.com/nainasood Naina Sood

Southwest card holders get 500 Rapid Reward bonus points on ANY purchase made through Rapid Rewards shopping when using their SW card to pay. Naina S (BOS)

Andrew Dhuey

I’ve given up on proselytizing. At first the idea of using miles to get F and C awards/upgrades on long-haul flights sounds really exciting to people. Then when I explain the ways one acquires the miles and finds award flights, the enthusiasm level plummets. Hardly anyone seems to willing to put the time into this. Fair enough, folks — enjoy that middle seat in coach. I’ll be in the upper deck. See you at the arrivals lounge. Well, actually I won’t see you there.

Some just don’t want to bother. A friend and I recently stayed at a Westin and I tried to get her to get an SPG Amex so we could get 2 free nights instead of just 1. She just didn’t want the hassle, so instead, she paid me for her 1/2 of the room cost by buying me a beach massage. Nice!

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